Cutting Edge School of Music and Performing Art 2022

Power and Institutionalisation

The framework and structures of the school of music and performing art have shaped its activities and contributed both to promoting and restraining different practices. The unique position of the school of music and performing arts, between art and culture, education and experience and national and local plans, generates a multitude of cooperating actors without a strong overriding organisational and legal framework. To operate within such a conglomerate of interests may inspire to think in terms of organisational structures that are less static and hierarchical than those that are adapted to more traditional enterprises and organisations. How could it be possible to imagine organisational models where the dynamic and multifaceted existence of the music and performing art school is transformed into its greatest potential? How can frameworks be developed that give rise to local initiatives, flexible solutions, and occasional artistic cooperation? What is being restrained, and what is being promoted by the existing framework? What are the experiences from related arenas that may have a transfer value when the aim is to highlight different organisational models for the music and performing art school?

Art or culture?

In the curriculum framework, the school of music and performing art’s activities are more often than not presented as ‘art and culture’, as if it was one concept. Will separating the two concepts ‘art’ and ‘culture’ open up new possibilities for the school of music and performing art? Culture is usually defined as the attitudes, values, and norms that we agree on and are educated into. They create an identity and belonging and regulate ways of thinking and acting in a society, a group, or an organisation. Art may be said to have a different and rather opposite mandate: Art challenges culture! The Curriculum Framework for Schools of Music and Performing Arts states that ‘A confrontation with creative art can wrench us out of our habitual modes of thought, challenge our opinions, and provide experiences that spur us to re-examine prevailing conceptions and break with conventional wisdom and customary modes’. If the basis is this kind of view of art, emphasising breach, challenge and innovation (‘think the unthought, see the unseen and say the unsaid’, as is also stated in the Curriculum Framework), the question becomes: Does the school of music and performing art have structures and learning goals that promote education and culture, but not art? Are there examples of projects that can shed new light on this question?

The tasks and responsibilities of the school of music and performing art in the Age of Anthropocene

In 2018, the Arts Council Norway invited to its annual meeting with only one issue on the agenda: What is the significance of art and culture in a world of dramatic changes to the climate and the environment? In UNESCO’s Road Map for Arts, one of the three targets is to: ‘Apply arts education principles and practices to contribute to resolving the social and cultural challenges facing today’s world’. But should the field of art be able to take a stand? Or does it constitute a breach with the autonomy of art to give it a societal role? Can art allow itself to arouse troublesome emotions and unpleasantness, or should it solely be concerned with beauty and hope? Eco-art often means to work with and in nature and to move beyond the classroom; like when the actors anchor their project where the plastic waste is gathering, or in the nature they wish to present or save. The students at schools of music and performing art will, together with their teacher, be able to become fieldworkers who cooperate with researchers and/or a neighbourhood. What is the value of such practices to the music and performing art school? And perhaps particularly interesting: What are the thoughts, ideas and requirements of the children and the youth themselves in the Age of Anthropocene? What would young climate activist as Greta Thunberg, Penelope Lea or Anuna de Wever have done if they were a student at a school of music and performing art? And how do we hope they would be received there?